


What Love Is

by imagined_melody



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Fluff without Plot, M/M, POV Multiple, mentions of porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difference between love and sex, from both Peter and Claude's perspectives. (Reposted from livejournal.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Love Is

It hadn’t taken Peter long in life to realize that love was not merely about sex. He’d discovered this when he was 15– through porn, of all things, the experimentation with illicitly obtained materials that all boys his age engaged in. Tingling with the anticipation of seeing the dirty images, and surreptitiously checking his closed door every few seconds to be sure no one was entering, he popped in the video and began to watch, wide-eyed.

A while later, though, as he was rewinding the tape and searching for a good hiding place beneath his bed, he found himself no less puzzled about the whole thing, and strangely let down. It hadn’t been what he had expected. Sure, there had been graphic shots of _parts,_ and he certainly knew more about the mechanics and visuals than he had been able to claim before. But Peter associated sex with attraction, and attraction with romance, and romance with the sort of heightened emotions that were commonly felt whenever someone reasonably good-looking was in the vicinity. That emotion just wasn’t there in that video, or in any other that he sampled in future moments of curiosity. Porn, he learned, was all about the display of the body, about getting off on seeing two other people having sex. 

That wasn’t what Peter wanted. He didn’t understand how, if someone was doing something pleasurable to you, you could just lie back quietly and let them go at it. He wanted to know the way it was making them feel, to sense the beating of their hearts and the reeling of their minds in the way they looked and sounded. That was always what got him off, when he was older and had progressed to his own sexual encounters. Peter didn’t want to see sex. He wanted love.

(Later, when telling Claude this story, the British man would respond, “Ever the romantic,” and nuzzle into Peter’s neck until the younger man’s eyes fell closed, a smile settling on his face as his lover’s laugh disappeared into the skin of his collarbone.)

Sex with Claude felt like love, every time it happened. In all the porn he’d ever seen, the partners had been silent except for some heavy breathing and perhaps an unemotional “Yeah, that’s it” from the dominant male involved. If there were moans, they were disturbingly theatrical, suggesting nothing Peter found more than mildly arousing. But when he was with Claude, the two of them sitting among pooled sheets they’d already mussed earlier that day, straddling the other man’s lap and bearing down, the moans he made cut straight to his core. Claude would look at him with eyes so dark they were black, hands pressing hard into his hips as though afraid to let go, and his moans were a deep sound equal parts amazement and desperation. 

He saw it again after they had both come, when Claude sank back against the headboard and Peter draped himself over his lover’s body, propped up on his elbows with his hands clutching the pillows on either side, letting the rest of their bodies touch. The look Claude gave him then said that he never expected to have anything like this ever again, and would do anything in his power to hold on to it. Peter wanted to reassure him, to tell him he didn’t have to do anything, he had him no matter what. Maybe one day he would actually say the words.

Peter realized, then, that all this was love.

\---

When Claude thought about love, he didn’t think about sex either. Not that sex with Peter wasn’t good, of course; it just wasn’t that part that came to mind when the subject occurred to him. (Unless Peter was trying to drive him crazy, looking at him with those sultry eyes, the rascal, and communicating dirty thoughts so clearly that he didn’t need telepathy to drive his point home.) 

No, what he associated with it first was the awkward moments: the time they were so overeager that they didn’t look where they were going, and both tripped and fell headfirst over an end table. It was funny later, after Peter’s healing power had kicked in and recovered him from his near-concussion, and they’d managed to stem the bleeding from the wound on Claude’s arm where he had hit the offending object. That end table had never been completely sturdy afterwards, either. 

Or the time they tried to have invisible public sex– at Claude’s suggestion, of course; Peter could be kinky, but he wasn’t quite so much of an exhibitionist– and Peter had flailed out and kicked the stand of merchandise nearest him in a moment of intense ecstasy. The store owner had come rushing in and, seeing the mess, assumed there had been a burglary. The police had been called, and Peter and Claude had to hide behind a decorative plant (so their bodies wouldn’t be in the way) until they could get out the door without being noticed. Incidentally, Peter had not agreed to public sex since that day, though not for lack of Claude’s trying.

There’s a darker side, too, to why Claude doesn’t always associate love with sex. He’s not always gentle with Peter– both of them know that they can play a little rough at times. Claude’s aggressive, always has been, and Peter’s man enough to withstand and occasionally match whatever he throws at him (despite remarks to the contrary that Claude may have made in the past).

He’s cooled down, though, as time has gone by. Partly, perhaps, this can be chalked up to the influence of Peter’s ridiculously calm demeanor– although Claude will never quite claim Peter as a “calming influence”, since the boy still managed to do something to get on his nerves on at least a weekly basis. But there’s something else, too, contributing. On the nights when Claude lay awake, he thought of the fact that Peter didn’t always have his healing power anymore, now that his body could only handle one ability at a time. The kid wouldn’t necessarily be able to bounce back if something were to happen, but he was still as annoyingly apt to jump into dangerous situations as ever. 

Claude had been there. He had looked up on the night Peter’s body turned into flame and seen the explosion in the sky. He thought of this whenever Peter went on one of his ridiculous missions– especially when Claude himself couldn’t come– and wondered, _What if he doesn’t come back this time?_ He didn’t know what he would do without Peter around him constantly, filling his senses.

Finally, tired to the bone, he reached out and drew Peter’s sleeping form closer to him, thinking, _Well, if that’s not love, mate, then I don’t know what is._

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic reposted here in what I'm calling The Great Fic Migration of 2013. Funny thing, though: I assumed this was a repost from livejournal, but I can't find any evidence that I ever posted this up there. It's not on my old writing blog, nor is it on the peterandclaude lj community. So since I have no proof that it was ever posted, let's pretend it's brand new. :) The file itself is from July 2009, so I must have written it then.


End file.
